The most important thing you can do this month
The government’s review of game shooting closes on 1 November. One email is all it takes. If you haven’t sent yours yet, today is the day to act, says Conor O’Gorman.
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From gravel pit to wildlife haven: Will Garfit’s small shoot story
Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I developed a passion for shooting and for all the wildlife around me. In those days there was something of a divide between those with the heart of a hunter, who pursued game for the table and for sport, and the naturalists who took joy in seeing and recording the flora and fauna of the countryside.
By my early twenties in the 1970s, I didn’t see a difference between the two. Quite the opposite. The more my knowledge of and respect for the quarry grew, the more I realised that game and all wildlife depend on a diverse habitat in the landscape. It is a symbiotic relationship that benefits everything living in it.
Putting it to practice
At that time I was fortunate to acquire 69 acres of abandoned gravel workings in my home village in south Cambridgeshire. This became the stage for putting my beliefs and passions into action.
Over the years I planted trees and shrubs, opened up glades and rides to let light into the willow woodland and created lakes and scrapes in the low-lying areas. In the small arable fields I established uncultivated grass strips and margins, which would later become known as beetle banks and conservation margins. These ideas, together with selective predator control, seemed like common sense for the benefit of game and wildlife.
The results were encouraging from the start and justified the cash and time I had put into creating suitable habitat. Eventually I was able to release a modest number of reared pheasants and mallard, and so a small shoot was born.
Small shoots, big results
What mattered most to me was not only the game but the increase in other species. Over time we recorded 148 bird species and more than 460 botanical species. Research since then has explained scientifically why these practical shoot and wildlife management techniques work so well.
The project won the Laurent Perrier Award in 1988 (now the Purdey Awards, on whose judging committee I later served for 20 years). In 1991 my book Will’s Shoot was published and became something of a textbook for amateur keepers whose own passion had been kindled.
On the big scale of things my project is modest, but I believe it is an important story to tell Defra at a time when game shooting and the benefits of shoot management matter to more people than ever.
The unsung heroes of conservation
Gamekeepers are the unsung heroes of the conservation movement. Their job is to produce a shootable surplus of game, whether reared or wild, but directly or indirectly they are the custodians of so much more wildlife on their shoots.
All of this is paid for privately by landowners and shoots, with no grants or sponsorship. Across the country it covers many thousands of hectares of diverse, wildlife-rich habitat, including some of the most beautiful landscape in Britain. Just look out of a car window and it is obvious which farms are industrial prairies and which have a shooting and wildlife interest, with woods, hedgerows and game cover crops that feed small birds through the winter.
Shooting for everyone
Game shooting is open to more people today than ever before, and that popularity has been supported by an increase in reared birds. Rearing is a successful industry in its own right, with its own rules to ensure good husbandry and bird welfare. On the shoot, this is backed up by self-regulated best practice to make sure shooting is safe and ethical.
Everyone involved in a shoot day is there for the joy of it: the guns, the beaters, the pickers-up and everyone else who helps. They certainly aren’t there for the money but for the camaraderie, friendship and enjoyment. No shoot could run without a loyal team behind it. It is the best countryside therapy there is for health, fitness and wellbeing. You can’t put a price on that, but those involved across the shooting world are spiritual millionaires.
Shooting as so many enjoy it today would not be possible without reared birds. The benefits it brings to the countryside, to wildlife and to everyone involved are profound, and they deserve to be recognised.
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Will Garfit
Will Garfit is an artist, author and conservationist who transformed 69 acres of former gravel workings in south Cambridgeshire into a thriving small shoot and wildlife haven. Winner of the Laurent Perrier Award in 1988 and a Purdey Awards judge for 20 years, he is the author of Will’s Shoot.
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